Since the adoption of the electric guitar in pop music in the 1950's, musicians have been exploring new ways to change the timbre of their individual sound. The electrification of music led to new circuits that modify the signal and the resulting sound in many ways. Starting with the wide use of distortion for guitars in the blues and early rock-and-roll genres, then gaining steam with new effects like tremolo, echo and others that characterized the new sounds of pop music in the 1960's, popular music has never been the same.
Compact sound modulator systems, often called “pedals, effects or stomp boxes,” or herein “effects pedals” entered the market decades ago. Even though new effects pedals enter the market regularly, many musicians prefer the older designs to the newer ones for their “warmer” analog qualities. Consequently, well into the digital age, analog effects pedals continue to be manufactured and collected. Nearly every analog effects box produced has at least one knob for adjusting its characteristics of the given sound effect. Traditionally, a musician adjusts this knob beforehand until he or she finds a desired level for the given sound-effect; and then, simply turns it on and off as needed during a live performance. More recently many musicians—especially modern guitar, bass, and keyboard players—can be seen adjusting these knobs in the middle of a song in order to vary their soundscapes to distinguish the different sections of the song with a sound that is pleasing to the artist and the audience.
The problem is simple: many analog effects knobs are only hand-adjustable, and a musician's hands are busy during a performance. The obvious solution is to provide a hands-free means of adjusting the knobs, so that the musician can modify any sound effects while keeping their hands on their instrument. Successful professional musicians can employ technicians who can dissect and customize any pedal to meet the artist's fickle needs, but this is expensive for the ordinary musician or hobbyist. As well, custom technical modifications require some time to complete the modifications even for artists willing to pay for customization.
By applying the increased access and cost decline of simple robotic control components, I hope to capitalize on this gap in functionality. This simple robotic mechanism will utilize a widely-used pivot-action foot-pedal (hundreds on the market since the 1960's, with which most musicians are familiar) to control this knob-adjusting device. Although there are already a few score solutions in the market today they fail to combine functionality and accessibility, especially regarding analog devices that lack digital expression ports.